Low-power, short-range technology could be available next year

Matt Hamblen over at Computerworld has an interesting article on Qualcomm's development of a short-range wireless technology that uses far less power than other short-range transmission technologies such as Bluetooth.

"Peanut," as Qualcomm calls it, would be able to transmit data across maybe the length of a room, tops, Qualcomm research SVP Matt Grob explained today during a session at EmTech@MIT 2010 in Cambridge, Mass. As Hamblen writes:

The chief benefit of Peanut would be that it requires less power than other short-range radio specifications such as Zigbee and Bluetooth, which are used in many applications, ranging from manufacturing and monitoring devices that talk wirelessly to one another, to phone headsets and car stereos connected to phones.

Grob told Hamblen in an interview that Peanut, which Qualcomm has been working on for four years, should be available commercially within a year or so.

I wish I could find more details to publish, but Hamblen's article is about all that's out there now (and there's absolutely no information about Peanut on Qualcomm's website). And while the implied advantage to Peanut is in battery cost savings, without knowing how much less energy Peanut requires compared to alternatives such as Bluetooth, Zigbee and Ultra Wideband, it's impossible to put a number on that.